Posts Tagged ‘robots’

suffering cyborg

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Cast of Wonders 514: The Whipping Bot

Cast of Wonders 514: The Whipping Bot is a Cast of Wonders original.

bullying, violence, injustice and abuse. One use of the f-word.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 24:09 — 37.6MB)

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The Whipping Bot

by Jasinta Jim Langer

The bot lay on the floor, quivering. Occasionally it made an attempt to lift its upper body, a first step to getting up, but before it could get very far, someone would kick it again. A shoe would connect with its shell with a thud and its head would hit the floor with a clunk. The kids didn’t hurt their feet, kicking it. All the metal and hard plastic was covered in rubbery resin so no toes were stubbed and no knuckles bruised. Even the skull was only a little bit harder.

Eventually, most of the children got bored and the group began to disperse down the corridor in twos and threes, some still laughing and joking about the robot’s reactions, some forgetting about it entirely as soon as their backs were turned, chatting about sports and grades and their unbearable homework loads instead. Beren and Cindy stayed back and hurled insults at it some more while it curled up into a fetal position. “Useless chunk of metal”, “weirdo”, “reject”, “victim”, the usual. Finally, the bell rang, Cindy spat at the robot’s back one last time, and they, too, hurried to get to class. The robot whimpered and banged its head against the floor in what looked like frustration. Clunk. Clunk. Clunk. Then it went about getting up in its gangly and inelegant way.

It would have been very, very easy to push it over again. Instead, Alej, who had been leaning against the wall, wordlessly watching the whole sorry spectacle, walked next to it as it made its way towards the room where it would sit among the people for whose mistreatment it was made for another two hours. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 419: Little Wonders 26: Fathers’ Day

Cast of Wonders 419: Little Wonders 26: Fathers’ Day is a Cast of Wonders original.

Grief

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 22:19 — 20.9MB)

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The Last PoMatic
by Amanda Helms

Rain dripped down PoMatic!365’s chassis and occluded its camera. Running its tiny wiper over the lens, it continued the Standard Enticement Protocol.

“Step right up, folks! No visit to Blue Seas Boardwalk is complete without a customized poem from PoMatic! Love poems, haiku, sonnets, sestinas, free verse, all tailored to you, from a simple scan of your identichip! No two poems are ever the same!” (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 410: Cast Member Rules at Old Tech Town

Cast of Wonders 410: Cast Member Rules at Old Tech Town is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 26:40 — 24.9MB)

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Cast Member Rules at Old Tech Town

by Shaenon Garrity

Thank you for uploading the autonomous guide stream Cast Member Rules at Old Tech Town. Through this node we will provide scheduled reminders of your duty roster and update your personal ruleset as required. Cast Member Rules at Old Tech Town may be deleted at the end of the summer when you depart.

1. Old Tech Town, known to indigenous humans as San Francisco, is a protected heritage site. Treat the area with the respect you would show your own root compiler, which in a sense (symbolic/holistic, not literal) it is. (Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 394: Five Functions of Your Bionosaur (Staff Picks 2019)

Originally published in Robot Dinosaur Fiction! (May 2018); Reprinted in Cast of Wonders, Dinovember, Episode 383, December 13, 2019.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 11:46 — 11.2MB)

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Five Functions of Your Bionosaur

by Rachael K. Jones

1.

Your parents first activate your bionosaur when they bring you home from the hospital. The bionosaur was a baby shower gift from your mom’s favorite aunt. They were nervous about its size, the stainless steel maw, the retractable razorclaws inside its stubby little arms, but the aunt had insisted. She’d programmed it herself, covered its titanium-alloy skeleton in top-grade synthskin featherscales, and pre-loaded it with educational apps.

(Continue Reading…)

Image of a robotic dinosaur

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Cast of Wonders 385: Be a Thunder, Release a Roar

Originally published in Robot Dinosaur Fiction! (May 2018)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 17:54 — 16.9MB)

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Be a Thunder, Release a Roar

by Osahon Ize-Iyamu

It’s January 2028 and young Uwaila watches the TV, fixated at what’s right in front of her. The dinosaurs appear with a mighty boom, with feet that hit the earth like a rumble. They make everything look so small, all humans look so little, make everybody afraid. They hold a certain kind of power Uwaila needs, a roar and gentleness that makes them perfect to watch.

(Continue Reading…)

Image of a robotic dinosaur

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Cast of Wonders 384: Sphexa, Start Dinosaur

Originally published in Robot Dinosaur Fiction! (August 2018)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 13:45 — 13.1MB)

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Sphexa, Start Dinosaur

by Nibedita Sen

Asha—Ash to friends—wedges the maintenance door open wide enough to slip into the darkened interior of the abandoned ride. Inside smells like rust and stale water and plastic fused with metal.

“Sphexa,” he says. “Light.”

The small robot bobbing behind him clicks, casting a circle of illumination on the concrete floor. He made Sphexa in shop class at school, patching together an old Echo, a frame salvaged from a drone, a rolling toy robot, and a few other things, because if you’re going to be that stereotype of the Indian kid good at engineering, you might as well lean all the way in.

“Reminder,” Sphexa says as they make their way down the narrow walkway lining the tunnel. “Event upcoming in two hours: Pick Mei up for prom.”

“I’m working on it, Sphexa.”

(Continue Reading…)

Image of a robotic dinosaur

Genres: ,

Cast of Wonders 383: Five Functions of Your Bionosaur

Originally published in Robot Dinosaur Fiction! (May 2018)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 13:36 — 12.9MB)

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Five Functions of Your Bionosaur

by Rachael K. Jones

1.

Your parents first activate your bionosaur when they bring you home from the hospital. The bionosaur was a baby shower gift from your mom’s favorite aunt. They were nervous about its size, the stainless steel maw, the retractable razorclaws inside its stubby little arms, but the aunt had insisted. She’d programmed it herself, covered its titanium-alloy skeleton in top-grade synthskin featherscales, and pre-loaded it with educational apps.

When your bionosaur’s eyes first flare to life, it scans tiny, squalling you and reaches out a stubby claw to rock you. When it starts humming a jazzy rendition of the Batman theme, you quiet down and sleep.

Your bionosaur can differentiate between hunger-cries and dirty-diaper-cries. When your parents realize this, they call up the aunt and apologize for doubting. But your bionosaur just keeps singing, its glowing red eyes fixed upon you like you’re the center of all gravity, the origin of its universe.

One thing your great-aunt forgot to mention: bionosaurs imprint for life.

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 333: Tunguska, 1987

First published in Tales From Alternate Earths, Inklings Press, 2016

Content Warning: Profanity, death of a pet

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 42:41 — 39.5MB)

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Tunguska, 1987

by Maria Haskins

1929

Alexander was running through the snow. The rifle, and the pack of squirrel-skins pounded against his back with every step. Realization seeped into him as he ran: he had shot a Metallic. Its shiny armor hadn’t protected it. After all these years of living in fear, it had been that easy to take one down: one shot, straight into its mid-section, and the hovering thing had cracked apart and fallen to the ground.

He’d peered inside the broken remains and seen nothing but metal and wires. Nothing living hid inside. Ajax dead beside it, a mess of black and grey fur and curled tail in the snow. So much blood. The torn ear, where the neighbor’s dog had ripped into him as a pup had been the only recognizable part of his head. Best damn squirrel-dog anyone had ever had. Best damn dog anyone had ever had. And that Metallic had fired like it meant nothing.

Alexander’s heart raced as he ran. Was this what rebellion and resistance tasted like: tears and bloodied iron on your tongue, the sting of gunpowder in your nostrils?
(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 305: All Systems Go

Originally published in Spacesuits and Sixguns, Volume 2, Issue 1 (2015)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 19:40 — 18.6MB)

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All Systems Go

by Gerri Leen

The spaceport at Norn Five is a shining ode to order, automation, and interstellar travel. State-of-the-art communication ports dot the walls, offering instant access to loved ones, bosses, or eccentrics offering revolution at bargain prices.

Travelers move across the floors, various forms of locomotion taking them from point A to point B. Walkers tends to be the most common, but there are also floaters, crawlers, slitherers, and the odd vaporous beings that just sort of waft.

And working around it all are the units of the robotic char force. One in particular moves slowly along the wall, sucking up the residue left by one of the slithering public. It gets stuck for a moment when it hits a point where one being’s slime has mixed with another’s, making a sort of glue of the noxious kind. The bot revs forward, then backward, sucking up goop up as it goes, spritzing solvent onto the floor and then wiping it up so no one slips.

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 247: The Golem of Deneb Seven

Originally published in InterGalactic Medicine Show Issue 40 (July 2014)

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 39:14 — 36.1MB)

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Show Notes

Theme music is “Appeal to Heavens” by Alexye Nov, available at MusicAlley.com.

The Golem of Deneb Seven

By Alex Shvartsman

I was eleven years old when the war came to the Deneb system.

At first, we didn’t know that anything was wrong. Mom and Dad were clearing the table after dinner, Avi was building some sort of a castle out of plastic construction blocks, Sarah was asleep in her crib, and Grandpa was reading one of his thick Hebrew books, leaning into the volume and squinting a little by candlelight. I sulked because I was going be the only girl in my class to miss Karen’s birthday party tomorrow.

There would be no chatting or video games for me that evening, or until after dinner the following night, because we weren’t supposed to use electricity on Shabbos. This weekly routine was difficult to accept while living in the place where few others shared our beliefs. It was far more frustrating this time around, because Dad wouldn’t drive on Shabbos, either, and that meant I had no way to get to Karen’s party. All the other girls were going to be there. Her parents were bringing in a magician all the way from the city, and it had been the talk of the school for weeks. So I sulked, wondering why God didn’t want me to have any fun.

For lack of anything better to do, I was staring out the window when I saw a streak of white light shoot across the night sky. I watched it fall toward the ground in a great wide arc, but before it completed its downward journey there was another, and another.

“Look, Dad, quick! A meteor shower!” I waved him over and pressed my face against the glass. Father set down the salad bowl and came over. He stood behind me and peered out the window. The sky was raining with shooting stars.

(Continue Reading…)

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Cast of Wonders 128: Robots Don’t Cry

Cast of Wonders 128: Robots Don’t Cry is a Cast of Wonders original.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:38 — 26.2MB)

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Robots Don’t Cry

by George Edwards

I walked alone down a road with farms on all sides, cowboy hat on my head.

“Where am I Marco Polo?” I knew where I was, of course, but Marco Polo could see better.

He fed me all the data he could. He was one of the few satellites still orbiting earth after years of neglect.

“Thank you sir,” I said after his transmission ended. He gave me my exact location. I walked for hours.

A pick-up truck rambled up the road behind me, an odd noise for times like these. I stuck my thumb out.

The truck slowed and cracked its window. A grizzled old man was behind the wheel said, “Where ya headed?”

Using the friendliest voice in my bank I replied, “East, sir, to Auburn.”

He leaned over and opened his door for me. “Hop in,” he said.

(Continue Reading…)